Bindy Jhooti On Losing Everything
He built a denim empire, watched it fall apart, and told almost no one how it felt
Arun Setty became a single dad in 2019, the same year he lost both his parents. His ex waited until his father had died before filing for divorce, not wanting to upset him while he was still alive. Within months Arun had buried his mother and father, watched his marriage end, and found himself largely cut off from a wider family he had once been close to.
He stepped back from his career as an accountant to be with his son full time, homeschooling him through 21 weeks of lockdown and rebuilding the kind of daily routine, school runs, bike rides, weekends away, that his old working life had never allowed. "My son is probably the only person really who genuinely cares about me," he says, describing the isolation of those early years.
Out of that loss came a second thread to his life. Arun trained as a bereavement volunteer with Cruse, the UK's national bereavement charity, and was later nominated for Best Volunteer in Hertfordshire. He now works as an NHS response volunteer at his local hospital in Stevenage and helps run a weekly coffee morning for older people.
Quotes
"My son is probably the only person really who genuinely cares about me"
"I've come out of my situation much stronger and learned to love myself and appreciate myself and be more confident than I was before"
This Episode Is About
This episode looks at single dad grief through Arun Setty's story, a man who lost both his parents and his marriage inside the same year.
Arun talks to The Dad Project about the isolation that followed, the coping mechanisms he leaned on when his son wasn't with him, and how he channelled his own grief into volunteering, first for the bereavement charity Cruse, then for the NHS.
The conversation turns on a question most men don't ask out loud, who actually cares about me now, and how Arun found his own answer through service, friendship, and a stubborn refusal to give up on himself.
Who This Episode Is For
Men who've lost a business or a career
Fathers who never told their sons the truth
Sons wanting an honest talk with their dad
South Asian men carrying family expectation
Anyone taught that strength means staying quiet
What You'll Takeaway
Bottling up is not coping
Losing a business isn't losing yourself
Time doesn't erase pain, it makes it manageable
Letting your kids choose their path is love
The hardest years are often the quietest ones
A father's silence weighs as much as a son's
Small progress still counts as moving forward
